{"id":38526,"date":"2014-11-26T19:54:21","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T19:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38526"},"modified":"2014-11-27T02:49:04","modified_gmt":"2014-11-27T02:49:04","slug":"grad-student-alex-finley-found-her-roots-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38526","title":{"rendered":"Grad student Alex Finley found her roots \u2014 and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grad student Alex Finley found her roots \u2014 and more<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

William & Mary News and Events<\/a>
\nThe College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
\n2014-11-24<\/p>\n

Jim Ducibella<\/strong><\/a>, Communications Specialist<\/p>\n

This is part one of a two-story series. Check back Nov. 26 for the second part<\/a>. – Ed.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a child, Alex Finley<\/a> remembers going through three phases of intense interest: One was genealogy. Another was the Civil War<\/a>. The third was American Girls dolls<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I guess I was always destined to be a historian,\u201d she said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n

Finley, a Ph.D. candidate in history at William & Mary who is studying the domestic slave trade and the finance and business practices of slave traders in the antebellum period<\/a>, combined two of those three passions to uncover a little known, controversial community in West Virginia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a discovery that has drawn the attention of television producers from the PBS<\/a> program Finding Your Roots<\/em><\/a> and ushered in a fascinating chapter in her life.<\/p>\n

She began by researching her mother\u2019s family history while she was in high school in southern Ohio<\/a>, and continued her research as an undergraduate at Ohio State, completing an honors thesis on that particular branch of the family<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Male family \u2013 or Mayle, as it\u2019s also known \u2013 came to the United States from Dover, England<\/a>, and eventually settled in Hampshire County<\/a>, located in West Virginia\u2019s Eastern Panhandle<\/a> and Potomac Highlands<\/a> regions.<\/p>\n

Wilmore Male and his wife, Mary, had several children, including Wilmore, Jr., who fought in the Revolutionary War<\/a> and came back to West Virginia to start a farm.<\/p>\n

While there, he began a relationship with a slave he owned named Nancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proof we have of this is an extraordinary emancipation<\/a> document from 1826,\u201d Finley said. \u201c(Male) emancipates Nancy and says that she is forever set free from this point \u2013 on the condition that she remain living with him as his wife.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s extraordinary for the time period, for several reasons: One, he\u2019s coming out publicly and saying this. Two, interracial marriage is illegal at this time and here he is in a courthouse saying he intends to live with this woman. They end up living together, with no evidence they were ever harassed or bothered by anyone for their relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

How could that be? Finley\u2019s research showed that the man at the courthouse who recorded the document \u2013 John White — was the son of Male\u2019s captain in the Revolutionary War…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grad student Alex Finley found her roots \u2014 and more William & Mary News and Events The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 2014-11-24 Jim Ducibella, Communications Specialist This is part one of a two-story series. Check back Nov. 26 for the second part. – Ed. As a child, Alex Finley remembers going through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2895,459,8,6940,20],"tags":[18523,3039,18527,18526,18529,18525,3040,18524,18528],"class_list":["post-38526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-campus-life","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-alex-finley","tag-alexandra-finley","tag-finding-your-roots","tag-jim-ducibella","tag-mary-male","tag-the-college-of-william-mary","tag-west-virginia","tag-william-mary-news-and-events","tag-wilmore-male"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}